GOLDBERG VARIATIONS - Variazioni Goldberg

MICHAEL GOLDBERG (1924-2007)

Bogen er en god indføring i denne spændende kunstners værk. Billederne i bogen er opdelt i to grupper: 1950-1962 og 1980-1996. 

Michael Goldberg was a painter of strong convictions who in his youth was influenced by the gestural Abstract Expressionist mode of older painters like Kline, Still and de Kooning, and never abandoned it. The improvisational nature of jazz, which he admired, was also important to his work.

Born in the Bronx on Dec. 24, 1924, Michael Goldberg began classes at the Art Students League at 14. From 1940 to 1942 he attended the school run by the Abstract Expressionist painter and teacher Hans Hofmann. His studies were interrupted at 18 when he volunteered for Army service in World War II. He became a master sergeant in the China-Burma-India Theater. Mr. Goldberg received a Purple Heart and the Bronze Star that was awarded to every member of the unit.

After further study at the League and the Hofmann school, he set up shop as a painter, eventually occupying Rothko’s Bowery loft. Hanging out at the Cedar Street Tavern and with the Eighth Street Club, a discussion group founded by downtown artists in 1949, he came under the influence of Abstract Expressionism.

In 1951 his work made its first public appearance in the Ninth Street Show, a groundbreaking exhibition of the new New York avant-garde organized by the club and the dealer Leo Castelli. In 1953 the Tibor de Nagy Gallery gave him his first solo show.